Conic sections
Secciones cónicas
- Date
- c. 200 BCE · confidence medium
- Place
- Alexandria, Egypt
- Credited to
- Apollonius of Perga (with Menaechmus as a precedent)
- People
- 👤 Apolonio de Perge262 BCE–190 BCE
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
What was discovered
Treatise in eight books that defines the ellipse, parabola and hyperbola as sections of a single cone and studies tangents, asymptotes, foci and normals. His theory was the instrument with which Kepler and Newton described orbits.
The names ellipse, parabola and hyperbola come from Apollonius.
What it led to
- Kepler's laws
- analytic geometry
- projective geometry
- mirror optics
Built on
- Euclidean axiomatic geometryc. 300 BCE
- Menaechmus and the doubling of the cube
Made possible
- Newtonian reflecting telescope1668
- reflecting telescopes
- parabolic (satellite) dishes
- ballistics